Dissecting the Criminal Corpse: Staging Post-Execution Punishment in Early Modern EnglandThose convicted of homicide were hanged on the public gallows before being dissected under the Murder Act in Georgian England. Yet, from 1752, whether criminals actually died on the hanging tree or in the dissection room remained a medical mystery in early modern society. Dissecting the Criminal Corpse takes issue with the historical cliché of corpses dangling from the hangman’s rope in crime studies. Some convicted murderers did survive execution in early modern England. Establishing medical death in the heart-lungs-brain was a physical enigma. Criminals had large bull-necks, strong willpowers, and hearty survival instincts. Extreme hypothermia often disguised coma in a prisoner hanged in the winter cold. The youngest and fittest were capable of reviving on the dissection table. Many died under the lancet. Capital legislation disguised a complex medical choreography that surgeons staged. They broke the Hippocratic Oath by executing the Dangerous Dead across England from 1752 until 1832. This book is open access under a CC-BY license. |
Other editions - View all
Dissecting the Criminal Corpse: Staging Post-Execution Punishment in Early ... Elizabeth T. Hurren No preview available - 2016 |
Dissecting the Criminal Corpse: Staging Post-Execution Punishment in Early ... Elizabeth T. Hurren No preview available - 2016 |
Dissecting the Criminal Corpse: Staging Post-Execution Punishment in Early ... Elizabeth T. Hurren No preview available - 2016 |
Common terms and phrases
actual anatomical archives August became become blood body brain called capital century chapter Collection condemned contemporary convicted court Creative Commons crime criminal corpse criminal dissections crowd cultural curiosity dead Derby detailed dispensary early modern eighteenth-century emotional England English evidence execution experience explains Figure gallows hand hanged happened head heart historians Hospital human Illustration Image Infirmary Issue John Journal justice Lancaster later Leicester letter License London looked March material meant medical death medicine medico-legal Murder Act nature newspaper noted observed officials once original penal surgeons person physical physician post-execution post-mortem practical present Press provincial punishment Record reported rites rope Royal seen sense sentence social Society sort studies supply Surgeon’s Hall taken Thomas tion took town University venue